by Leia Stone
My brow furrowed. “No way. Come with me.”
He looked behind him. The Abrus demon had dissolved the necktie, and was grinning wickedly at us.
Lincoln turned back to me. “I don’t run from demons, Brielle. Go. I need to know you’re safe.”
“I don’t run from demons.” That was both the cockiest and hottest thing he’d ever said.
“I can help,” I told him, holding Sera up to him.
He shook his head. “Take her,” he whispered to someone behind me, and then I was being forcefully dragged away.
“No! Lincoln!” Whoever held me had a firm grip; I bucked and thrashed to no avail, ultimately giving in, and looking back in Lincoln’s direction.
With me forgotten, he swung around and thrust his sword in the air. Blue shards of light burst from the tip and the two Brimstone demons were brought to their knees. Just as I was sucked out the back door, the Abrus demon charged for him.
“Lincoln!”
I didn’t realize tears were streaming down my face, until whoever held me eased their hold, and wiped them.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me,” Fred apologized.
Then he shoved me into the open door of Noah’s SUV and closed it. His melancholy face was the last thing I saw that night, as the SUV peeled out of the parking lot.
Chapter Seventeen
I screamed for Noah to turn the car around the entire drive to Fallen Academy, but he insisted he was following orders, that the Fallen Army was inbound, and Lincoln would be okay.
I’d numbly texted Lincoln when we arrived, and then was ushered to Raphael’s office, though he wasn’t there. Noah instructed me to wait on the couch, that it was the safest place for me, and he would guard the door from outside. Shea wasn’t permitted to wait with me, so she ran back to the dorm to hide, and we texted back and forth for over an hour, until, by some miracle, sleep finally took me.
It was the early hours of the morning, still dark out, when the murmured voices woke me.
“What is she? They want her because she has demon powers, but so do a lot of kids at this school,” Lincoln whispered.
“She’s awake,” Raphael informed him.
Dammit. Freaking psychic archangel!
I peeled my eyes open and sat up quickly, taking in Lincoln’s disheveled appearance. He hadn’t slept, that much was clear, and I could see by the fresh dressing on his shoulder, and the full sling, that he’d been to the healing clinic.
“Are you okay?” I bolted to a standing position, the last remnants of sleep fading.
Patches of his skin were still welted from the beestings.
“I’ll recover.” His blue eyes roamed over my body as if checking me for injuries.
I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I could feel my sanity dancing in a chicken hat at the edges of my mind, threatening to jump off the cliff.
“You have to tell me everything you know. I can’t live like this. Why do they want me? Why are my wings black? What am I?” I shouted the last part, and ran a shaky hand through my hair. Raphael had answers, and I needed them, or I was going to lose my mind. The unknowing was more terrifying to me.
The archangel sighed, shared a long look with a confused Lincoln, and then walked toward me. With each step, his presence pressed in on me like a balm to a burning wound. My energy settled as he reached for my shoulder, resting a calming hand there.
“When you took the angelic blood test, it showed some demonic powers.” His words came like a punch in the gut. Every. Single. One. I mean, I’d guessed that I’d been demon gifted with the black wings, but I’d been in complete denial until right then.
I wasn’t angel blessed. I wasn’t like the other Celestials.
I shrugged out of his touch and crossed my arms, facing the wall for a moment to compose myself.
“So what? Her own mother is a Necromancer. Half this school has some form of demon power in them. Why do they want her?” Lincoln was trying to downplay it, which made me fall for him even harder in that moment.
Raphael cleared his throat. “Because of the prophecy. Because of whose powers she has.”
My whole body went rigid as I tried to remind myself to breathe. I slowly turned around, my eyes snapping to the archangel’s face. “What did you just say?”
Prophecies were never good. I’d never heard of a prophecy where someone forecasted peace on Earth, or that starting in a certain year, everyone would be happy.
Raphael sighed again, seemingly resigned. “Right after the war, when we’d realized what it had cost the humans, we found our first Sighted. She was an older woman, about sixty years in age, and she told of a prophecy that each Sighted after her has repeated verbatim, despite never being told about it.”
No.
My thoughts immediately went to James and those few minutes before the Awakening ceremony. He’d told me to be careful, and what else? I couldn’t remember, and we’d been interrupted before he could tell me more. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since. Now that I thought of it, I hadn’t even heard about him. What happened to him after the Awakening? I’d have to ask Shea if she saw him at Tainted Academy. The Sighted received the rarest of the powers; I didn’t think I’d even met one at this school.
“What’s the prophecy?” I asked, wishing I had Teddy, my stuffed bear with one eye and a split neck from when Mikey tried to kill him with a bow and arrow. He was somewhere in a landfill right now, but I desperately wanted him back.
Raphael looked to Lincoln, who was just glaring at him with barely contained anger.
“Prophecies are fickle. If I tell you that you’ll trip and break your leg, and you do, then did you break your leg because you were meant to, or because I planted the seed in your mind?” Raphael asked.
“Sir.” Lincoln bit out that one word, and it was enough to set the tone.
Tell us or we’ll unleash the full rage of two people who don’t like being kept in the dark.
Raphael nodded. “The prophecy states that a young girl with black wings will go into the underworld, and kill Lucifer, ending the war.”
This isn’t happening. I’m still sleeping.
I laughed then. A maniacal, “I’m losing my mind” laugh. Lincoln was staring at me with worry, eyebrows furrowed, mouth dipping in a slight frown.
“That doesn’t mean it’s you, or that the prophecy will come to pass. The future is always changing—”
“Why do I have black wings? What am I?” I’d asked many times, and he’d always danced around it, conveniently leaving that part out.
Raphael took on the face of a father then, one who was about to tell a child their cat had been run over. “You’re a beautiful soul who was empowered with gifts from me, Michael, Uriel, Gabriel and…”
He paused and I leaned forward, though I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
“Lucifer.”
He actually said it, spoke my worst nightmare out loud. Not that I could conceive of such an awful thing, but pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to a human—being endowed with powers from Lucifer himself—had happened to me. Hooray….
I shook my head vigorously. “No. No, you’re mistaken.” Bile rose in my throat.
Denial. I would fly and live there forever, because there was no way I was accepting that as truth.
My eyes flicked over to Lincoln, who stood there slack-jawed, staring at me like I’d sprouted an extra head.
Raphael moved closer to me, and I took a step back. “I don’t want comfort. I want the truth!” I shouted at him.
He frowned. “Of course.” Then he walked over to the desk, and produced the box and knife from my blood ceremony. “Lucifer’s emblem, the snake, lit up when I tested you.”
Shock ripped through me at such concrete proof, my eyes filling with tears as denial turned to shame.
“That’s not fair!” I yelled as the tears overflowed, and trailed down my cheek. “I didn’t ask for this. You love talking about free will, well I didn’t will
any of this. I was an innocent five-year-old girl when you”—I jabbed my finger at him as the rage built within me—“and the rest of the angels started a war, infecting my people. Innocent humans were turned to freaks because of you!” I shouted.
Hurt crossed Raphael’s face. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Lincoln winced. “Brielle.”
“No. Leave me alone.” I turned and burst out of the door, blasting past Noah, Blake and Darren, who were stationed on either side.
I was dark. Shea had made me promise I wouldn’t let her go dark, and I was the one who did. Not just any dark magic ran through my veins—his did. Lucifer’s. The Devil. Freaking evil incarnate. I felt sick to my stomach thinking about it.
I ran harder, pumping my legs to take me to the open field where I knew I could be alone. Everyone was still sleeping, the sun just starting to rise. I wanted to fly far away from there, to another country, and never speak of it again. Live an entirely new life.
If I was Lucifer’s weird little stepchild, would the demons ever stop coming for me? Especially if they believed in some prophecy, where I was going to kill him?
Really? Me, an almost nineteen-year-old girl, go into the depths of Hell and kill the Devil? I laughed as more tears streamed down my face.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I whirled around to Lincoln. I just stood there, chest heaving from running, tears covering my cheeks. I was a hot mess, and I was still wearing my dress from the ball.
“I’m evil,” I whimpered. I had to voice my fears out loud to someone—why not him? He was probably there to lock me in my own area of the school, where they could keep an eye on me.
His face contorted in agony. “No. Never.”
He pulled me by the shoulders, and crushed me into his chest for a bear hug. As those strong arms wrapped around me, his scent washed over me, mixing with the warmth of his tight muscles, I felt so safe, so at home.
Lincoln Grey was hugging me. Hard. Like he didn’t want to let go.
Maybe I am still sleeping.
“We’ll figure this out together,” he promised.
What?
I looked up into his eyes as he looked down at me, our lips a mere agonizing inch apart. “Together?”
He nodded. “Yeah. You’ve grown on me. You’re mine now.”
“You’re mine now.”
My brain barely had time to process those delicious words, when his lips claimed mine in a tender kiss. It wasn’t heated like the one on the beach; it was soft, exploring, and over all too soon.
When he pulled back, he brushed his fingers through my hair. “When I met you, I was in a dark place, fresh from the loss of my family, but something about you lit me up again, made me care again. I tried to fight it, to look for reasons why this wouldn’t work, but I can’t anymore.” His thumb stroked my jaw, and a pulse of heat shot straight to my gut.
Whoa. I had no words for that announcement.
“Tell no one of this news. Except for Shea.” Then he switched to battle mode. “I’m going to double your training. I want you to become a lethal demon-killing machine by the end of the year. Pass the gauntlet, and get accepted into year two. It’s the only way to keep you safe,” he declared.
My mind was still on that kiss, that declaration that I, Brielle Atwater, lit him up inside. But then reality came crashing down—I was Lucifer’s daughter, for all intents and purposes.
“What if I go dark?” Black throat-choking magic flung from my mouth, after all. We certainly couldn’t ignore that.
He shook his head. “Not possible.”
Denial. I used to live there.
“Lincoln, I appreciate your faith in me, but if I go dark—”
Grasping both sides of my face, he cupped my cheeks. “Brielle, you annoy the shit out of me sometimes, you’re stubborn as hell, you don’t listen, and I’m pretty sure the black magic you choked the Abrus demon with is super-dark stuff, but you are not evil. I know your soul.”
“I know your soul.”
Lincoln must’ve spent a lot of time with his nose shoved in those poetry books I saw in his trailer. Though I wasn’t complaining one bit.
I’d heard rumors of those who went completely dark, and ended up committing suicide after being surrounded by such evil all the time. A twenty-three-year-old Dark Mage killed herself in our building just last year.
“Wait, I annoy you?” I asked, confused, and his laugh warmed my stomach, bringing a smile to my face. “You’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.” I winked, turning the gesture against him for once.
He kissed the tip of my nose. “Well aren’t we quite a pair?”
Lincoln Grey and I are a pair. What alternate universe is this? I’d wanted to kill him when I first met him, but now I wanted to see him dripping wet in his towel again. That V needed its own instant replay.
“Now what?” I asked.
His hands fell from my face and he gritted his teeth. “Now we train. I’m going to teach you everything I know, above what I should for your first year of schooling.”
“I’m already tired just thinking about it.”
He nodded. “You should be. I’m no longer going to go easy. It won’t do you any favors in the end.”
Stepping back, I crossed my arms and glared. “Excuse me? Go easy? I saved your ass back at the dance from those bees, remember?”
He chuckled. “No, Sera did. And if they kidnap you, that’s the first thing they’ll destroy. You need to become a weapon—your hands, your mind. I’m going to make a weapon out of you, Brielle.” He ended the last sentence with a sinister look.
Shit. Sounds scary.
I shrugged. “Couldn’t we just go on a date instead? Movies, maybe?”
His face didn’t budge and I groaned.
“When do we start?” I slept on a frickin’ couch last night and he’s injured, so he better not say—
“Now. Go change,” he commanded.
I groaned even louder as I succumbed to my fate.
The next few months were going to suck.
And suck they did.
Lincoln trained me harder than ever before. I was falling asleep in class because I was so exhausted from the extra workouts, but the past few months had been pretty great otherwise. Fred and I had remained friends, and he actually started dating Angela with my blessing. Lincoln and I were going strong, only verbally abusing each other 60 percent of the time.
“Get up, woman!” he roared.
My boy toy stood over me, sword drawn, the tip pressed into my neck slightly. “If you would allow me a weapon, this would be a fair fight!” I snarled at him.
Our make-out sessions, back in his trailer, were epic after a really good training session of talking shit to each other. I kept trying to go all the way with him, but the age thing freaked him out, even though I’d turned nineteen two months back, in November. I also might’ve let it slip that I’d only had sex once for thirty seconds. Now he kept calling me a virgin.
“Demons don’t do fair fights. Get. Up,” he growled, the blade tip tight to my neck.
He was definitely a bit psycho, but his looks more than made up for it. Weren’t we all a little crazy, after all?
“You have a blade to my neck. If I get up, I’ll bleed out,” I explained, in case he was off his meds or something.
He shrugged. “Think of something. Use dark magic, bend light, kick me in the balls. Just do something.”
I wanted those balls to help create my children one day, so that was out. Bend light? Was he drunk? That was some advanced-level shit that Darren was trying to teach me, but I had yet to even be able to produce light. And I wasn’t using dark magic. No way. Never again. And definitely not on him.
“I’m pregnant and it’s yours,” I stated calmly.
His eyes widened and his arm relaxed. “What?” he roared.
Using the distraction to roll out of the way of his sword, I kicked out with my leg, tripping him. He dropped the sword and went flying on his ass.
>
I grinned from my place on the floor as he turned to glare at me. “That was a low blow.” Then he looked impressed. “But effective.”
My body swiftly moved, crawling over to him, and straddling his waist. We were alone in the smaller side gym, and Lincoln was getting less pissy about public displays of affection. He kept threatening to find me a new trainer so there wasn’t a conflict of interest, but then he’d say he didn’t trust anyone enough.
When I plopped down on his crotch and arched my back, pressing my pelvis into him, he groaned.
“Silly. We haven’t had sex, so I can’t be pregnant.” I bent down and kissed his hot mouth.
He sucked my bottom lip, palm flattening against my back, and then suddenly I was being spun, until I was underneath him.
“Maybe I need to remedy that situation.” He looked me up and down with a half-lidded gaze.
Oh God, yes, please.
I checked a fake watch on my wrist. “Now’s good for me.”
He grinned, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what. Pass the gauntlet, and then maybe I’ll consider deflowering you.”
A groan escaped me. “I’m not a virgin! Since when does a girl have to beg for sex?”
He kissed my forehead and rolled off me. “Since now.”
The sexual tension between us was so strong, and I knew he was hurting as much as I was. I’d never wanted someone so badly as I wanted him. All of him. We’d been exclusively dating almost three months now. If we used protection, and were both consenting adults, we could totally bring on the sex!
“Pass the gauntlet,” he reiterated.
Standing, I peeled off my tank top to reveal my blue sports bra. I hoped my nipples were hard, like two little fingers flipping him off.
His eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I answered with a shrug. “It’s hot in here.”
He scowled. “I see what you’re doing. Trying to kill me?”
“Is it working?”
He adjusted his pants. “Yes. We’re done for today.”